There is nothing worse than when the walls in your home start to resemble the lines on your face.

You might not be able to restore a youthful glow to your visage, but you can definitely make your cracked or peeling walls shine again with a little bit of plaster repair. There is never a bad time to fix those problems, but if you’d rather kill two birds with one stone, then you might want to consider doing those fixes when you are about to freshen up your place with a lick of paint. You’re going to have to re-paint the spots you repair anyway, so why not give your space a complete makeover with a whole new color?

Repair Damaged Plaster Easily

If your walls are especially shabby, it can look like a very, very daunting job, but once you get rolling you’ll find that it really isn’t all that bad. In order to get your confidence up, try filling in some small holes like the ones that are usually left when old picture hooks and such are removed. Pick up a small can of compound and apply it to the holed area with a putty knife, making sure to try and make it as flat and smooth as possible. Once the compound has dried, check to see if there are any indentations and apply a second coat if needed. Once that dries, sand it down and touch up the paint to finish the job.

Once you can see how easily that small job can be mastered, it’s time to move on up to hairline cracks. That job is a little more involved, but is still fairly easy to accomplish. You can use the same type of compound as you would when fixing a hole, but you also have to embed drywall tape along the crack in order to cover it completely. The same rules apply when the compound dries, and that means checking to see if it needs a second coat followed by a lick of paint.

If you can easily achieve both of those jobs, then you are well on your way towards becoming a plaster master, but don’t give up your day job just yet.

The biggest job that you are going to have to face is replacing large chunks of damaged plaster, and that is not quite as easy as the first two jobs. If there is a particularly large piece of plaster that you feel can be re-attached, then do so by using screws and plaster washers before re-plastering. If there is a missing chunk, then the best way to fix that is to add a new piece of drywall to the hole. Measure the job out first and then treat it as a miniature drywall installation.

That means that you are going to need screws, tape, plaster, and a sander. The hardest part of this job is making sure that you get the measurements right, and if you do the actual plastering and sanding will be straightforward.